Edward Kneafsey

September 1997

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this work he provides another origin for the


  

surname Cnáimhsighe. The story which is the
Many people of Irish origin in
countries overseas take their primary interest
in Ireland in trying to locate an 'elusive Irish
ancestor'. Being only third generation away,
that was not my problem. My problem was to
try and discover the meaning of my surname,
Ó Cnáimhsighe, now in Ireland generally
transliterated from the Gaelic as Kneafsey.
After a long wait, like the proverbial buses,
two explanations came at once. Both came by
way of dictionaries.
Such is the bizarre nature of the
explanation leading to the quest for the shrine,
I had better start with the one that I consider
scientific. As a word, cnáimhsighe is a plural
of which the singular would be cnáimhseach.
This word is found in the dictionaries. It is a
by-name for a midwife. It may also be a name
for a woman. Woulfe describes Kneafsey as
one of Ireland's few metronymic names,
perhaps for this reason. I then found the word
cnaimhseag. This means bearberry, a plant
which is a mountain heather. Preferring dry
scree slopes, it grows above the heather line
on mountain fringes. Its main habitat in
Ireland is the north western mountains,
extending westwards from Antrim. I have
taken this to explain why Donegal is the
centre of surnames derived from
Cnáimhsighe. The plant is oxytocic, which
means it accelerates labour. Oxytocin is in
routine use in maternity wards, though not
sourced from bearberries. This explains the
midwife meaning. Finally, flowers are a usual
source for women's names. In the English
language Heather is popular.
It is necessary to lead with this
explanation, because these words and
meanings must have been common
knowledge in 1532, when the Donegal
chieftain Manus O'Donnell wrote his 'Betha
Colaim Chille' - or 'Life of St. Columba'. In
subject of this piece is what came to light
when I chased up O'Donnell. The Royal Irish
Academy's 'Dictionary of the Irish Language'
includes under cnáimhseach a reference to
Betha Colaim Chille, which in turn leads to
the story of the reliquary of Dun Cruin.
I had then to locate Dun Cruin. Betha
Colaim Chille had some place-names and
geographic references that helped. I could
understand that the people who in 1918 had
translated O' Donnell's Irish work had not
transliterated Cnáimhsighe into one of the
English language variants we all use: they
would not have known then that there were
'modern' spellings in existence. Nevertheless,
it was some time before it occurred to me that
a possible reason why they had not
transliterated 'Ciannachta' was because they
did not know what had become of the place-
name, if anything. The translation had been
funded by American Irish in Chicago. When I
found that Ciannachta had become Keenaght,
I could find what I was looking for: the shrine
was not in Co. Donegal, St. Columba's
birthplace, but in Co. Derry. Other paragraphs
of Betha Colaim Chille provided more clues
on the location: 'sand dunes by the sea' and
'fast beside Drum Ceat'.
This information brought me far from
Mayo and even beyond Donegal, to the east
side of Lough Foyle, where the lough
bottlenecks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Dun
Cruin is in the parish of Magilligan in what is
now Co. Londonderry, in the barony of
Keenaght.
St. Patrick had come to the Keenaght
1500 years ago. He had founded seven
chapels. One of them was at Dun Cruithne,
fort of the Picts, or Cruithini (cruth eineach,
face painted.) This became O'Donnell's Dun
Cruin. The Ordnance Survey of 1837 has it as
Duncrun, and so it remains to this day. (The
loss of the 'i' may be a continued
simplification. It may be that Cruin is or looks
like a genitive, and English practice with
words of other languages is to use the
nominative as citation case, even where
grammar calls for another.) St. Patrick also
founded an abbey here.
Two miles north east of Dun Crun
used to be the Church of Skreen. It is said this
was founded by St.Columba. This name is
from the Irish 'scrin', which was the word
O'Donnell had used for shrine. Ultimately the
word is Latin. There was a monastery called
Scrinium Sancte Columbae in the vicinity but
it is uncertain whether it was at Skreen
Church or Dun Crun.
The Kneafsey interest in the area is
because of the 'precious casket' - the reliquary
ordered to be made by St. Patrick. The smith,
Connla, who began the work, died before it
was finished. St. Columba came to the site
probably 80 years later. Finding no-one with
the skill to finish the casket, he ordered the
bones of Connla to be assembled. He then
restored the smith to life. Connla lived
another 20 years after that and had children.
These were called the clann cnaimhsighe, 'be
reason that he had been a long time in bones
(cnamhaibh aimsir foda) ere he was brought
back to life'. O'Donnell says that "moved by
the miracle of the completion of the shrine
and other miracles, Aidus, son of Ainmarech,
2
King of Ireland, granted to God and Columba
the land in which they were wrought, called at
this day Ard Meggiolagan and inferior to no
ecclesiastical territory in all Ireland at this day
1520". (1520 was the date O'Donnell wrote
this. The 'Life' does not provide a year for the
completion of the shrine, but as St. Columba
attended the Convention of Drum Ceat in 573
AD, this seems the most likely date for
Connla's resurrection.) Thanks to this
endowment, the little Duncrun Abbey became
one of the richest in Ulster.
The memoir written with the
Ordnance Survey of 1837 records the
extraordinary veneration paid to the shrine by
quoting an account of the parish written by
Mr. Beck of Magilligan in 1683:
"In the said parish are the ruins of an
old church called the Screen church,
which is thought to be vulgar from
shrine; in which, before the
Reformation, was kept several of
popery relics <relicks> as the shrine,
a picture that they used with the
picture of the Virgin Mary, and hand
bells which the priests used in some
ceremonies. This is called
Columbkille's church, which is
counted among them the great saint of
the northern parts. And on the 9th day
of June yearly, which is Columbkille's
day, the Irish come there to perform
some devotions and will creep on
their knees several times about the
same church. The use to this day
continued but nothing to what it was
before the rebellion, for they would
come from the furthest parts of Ulster
and Connaught, a great sort, 500
horses and more as I have been told
by their priests. I have likewise been
told that this parish Magilligan was a
sanctuary and that no man might be
taken out of it (if escaped thither) for
what offence whatever, but this was
before the British inhabited here".
(Mr. Beck is referring to the
rebellion of 1621. This had brought
still further desolation to Magilligan,
which had already been virtually
 depopulated by the wars between
Elizabeth I and the native chieftains.
'Creeping on their knees' is perhaps
how Mr. Beck would probably have
described the actions of some
pilgrims on Croag Patrick at the
present day.)
According to the OS memoir, the
probability is that the reliquary in its
unfinished state was at Duncrun and it was
deposited at Skreen after completion.
Duncrun is marked by what the memoir calls
a double-cross - a two-armed cross. Today it
would be called a Cross of Lorraine. Duncrun
is now a scheduled historic site. The site of
Skreen church is obliterated. It is close to a
railway.
The memoir tells us that it is from
O'Donnell's 'Life' that we learn the name of
the smith; and that Colgan in a note on the
passage, observed that the excellence of this
man's work had given rise to many proverbs.
When the Irish wish to praise a good
craftsman they say, "Connla himself was not a
more excellent tradesman". When they wish
to represent something as irreparable, they
say, "Connla the brazier could not mend it".
(Incidentally, the name means 'pure' -
appropriate for the shrine work he did.)
O'Donnell did not invent the legend
of Connla. He may have invented the
Kneafsey association with it. When he gave
his explanation of the origin of the surname,
his 'readers and hearers' would have known
there was a straightforward explanation
already existing. They would have known too
that this period was 400 years too soon for the
use of surnames, these having come in with
Brian Boru. When both narrator and audience
conspire in a willing suspension of disbelief,
the explanation can only be that some kind of
humour was in play. Further, I doubt if our
family was important enough to be in
O'Donnell's work on its own merits. I suspect
it was brought in for fun.
It turns out that O'Donnell was a
renowned satirist, though it is not thought that
he had satire in the 'Life'. Nevertheless,
without going into detail here, there are so
many oddities in the Connla story as
3
compared to the other resurrections St
Columba performed that this may be
contemporary satire rather than folklore.
Looking for a hypothesis, Edmund Bonner, or
Boner, later Bishop of London, a dedicated
shrine-buster, was active at the time, working
on King Henry VIII's 'press and pulpit'
campaign to divorce Catharine of Aragon.
Perhaps O'Donnell had him sprung from the
type of fantasy he was pledged to stamp out.
If this is right, the initial connection between
Cnáimhsighe and Bonner would have been
the translation of Bonner into Irish as
Cnáimhsighe, and not the translation of
Cnáimhsighe into English as Bonner.
Whatever the reason, the connection was
strong. Today, almost 90% of the 770
Cnáimhsighe families in Ireland have become
Bonner.
The year 1532 is critical for this
hypothesis. It will fail if there is an earlier
association of our surname with Connla.
There may well be and perhaps time will tell,
but for all the other resurrections done by St.
Columba, the editors of the 1918 translation
of the 'Life' provide a footnote indicating
O'Donnell's source. There is none for this.
Folklore or satire, however, it is a strange
story and like it or not we are part of it.
To provide a brief background on the
words, Woulfe says that Bonner/Boner is a
pseudo-translation of Cnáimhsighe. It
obviously is not an exact translation - just the
transfer of an idea suggested by the 'cnáimh'
element. The few untranslated families have
either Kneafsey in its variant spellings, or
Crampsey in its variants. (Donegal often
pronounces cr for cn. Gaelic pronunciation
varies amazingly.) Woulfe did not have the
midwife explanation. The Irish dictionaries
were perhaps not then available, but
'cnaimhseag' appears in a Scottish Gaelic
dictionary, which predates the publication of
his work. It is doubtful if he was aware of it,
however.
'Cnáimh' is the genitive of cnámh,
bone, and '-seach' is a feminine suffix.
Cnáimhseach is not a usual word for midwife
and would not be found in the English - Irish
section of a typical dictionary. From the
enquiries I have made, I would say that
without reference to a dictionary, probably no
native speaker or academic now knows a
Gaelic word for bearberry.
It seems reasonable that an oxytocic
plant and a midwife should have the same
etymology, but why they should be described
by the genitive of a word for bone with a
feminine suffix is something we shall
probably never be able to explain. I suspect
that the plant came first and the
midwifery/woman's name meanings followed
from it.
In most modern languages the word
for bearberry is just a translation into the
language of the botanic Latin, uva ursi,
botanic classification having preceded the age
of the dictionary. This is what happened with
English, though there are about ten folk-words
in Britain and America still in use. The three
Welsh words are folk-words, dating from the
13th century Myddfai records. A translation
from the botanic Latin would produce 'béar
sméar' in Irish which would probably have
been rejected as an option for inclusion in a
dictionary. 'Béar sméar' is what Irish speakers
first think of when asked for the Irish for
bearberry, but they always say, correctly, 'It
can't be this'. The Irish dictionary Gaelic
expression, lus na stalóg, describes the flower
rather than properties of the plant. It may not
be a folk-word and one would need to check
that a lexicographer has not made it up.
The historic site today is in private
hands in the farm of Duncrun, Bellarena,
Limavady. You take the Magilligan road from
Limavady. There is a side road to the right
called Duncrun Road. A short way along here
on the left is Limestone Road. On the left is a
farmhouse, white rendered in 1997, from
where permission should be sought. A track
on the left, uphill side of the house leads into
the fields. Go directly forward and continue to
rise. A field boundary fence crosses the route
but you can get through the wire. At the next
field boundary, turn right. On the summit is
the Cross of Lorraine. It is not a free-standing
cross, but a carving on a slab of stone.
Looking inland from the vantage
point and with the Kneafsey story in mind,
two features stand out immediately. First, in
4
the foreground there is the site of an ancient
burial ground. One could describe those
interred as the cnamhaibh aimsir foda. The
working of the land sometimes reveals old
bones to this day. Obviously, St. Columba had
no difficulty in finding the bones of Connla.
Secondly, within half a kilometre, the land
rises abruptly from 60 metres to 300 metres,
or 1000 feet, to form a cliff face several miles
long. Scree has built up all along the foot of
the cliff. It is almost inevitable that the
cnaimhseag grows there. With both burial
ground and scree in the same vista, Duncrun
is common ground to the two explanations of
the origin of Cnáimhsighe. Manus would have
known this as would anyone who heard his
version of the Connla story. I think there
would have been few of these, in view of the
long period of obscurity to which Betha
Colaim Chille was destined.
Immediately to the west and north of
Duncrun is a raised beach, marked on the
1837 OS map. There is a legend locally that
there is a ring in a stone on this beach where
ships in olden days used to tie up. Children
spend ages trying to find it. The geological
timing is wrong, but it may be that O'Donnell
would have had the same impression, and
would have thought that there had been 'sand
dunes by the sea' in St. Columba's day. The
shore is now three or four kilometres away, as
it may have been 1400 years ago.
The Picts, always in Ireland called the
Cruithians, moved under pressure from the
Gaels from their original homeland east of the
Bann. They held the 'hilly country' district
between what became the baronies of
Keenaght and Coleraine, in which Duncrun is
located. It was called variously Dun Dallaiug,
Ard Eolairg, Carn Eolairg and Carrac Eolairg.
It was ceded to the northern O'Neills after the
battle of Moin daire lothair. Columba himself
was of the northern O'Neills. Most of the Picts
migrated to Scotland. Much of the success of
the Columban church in Scotland is measured
in the conversion of the Picts to Christianity.
As Connla's skills had died with him so that
he had to be resurrected, the thought occurs
that he may himself have been a Pict.
What remains to us now from the
event at Duncrun in 573 AD?
 Betha Colaim Chille was written in As for the 'clann cnaimhsighe', the
manuscript by O'Donnell himself. Though it children of Kneafsey, whether they be
contains a great deal of material in existence descended from Connla after his resurrection,
before 1200, it was evidently not intended to or before his resurrection, or whether they had
be a work of art in itself, as were the nothing to do with Connla apart from being
productions of monastic foundations, framed in his legend by Manus O'Donnell,
Columban and otherwise. It used vernacular they live on. They enter history proper in
Irish comprehensible to ordinary people and 1095 with Scannlán Ó Cnáimhsighe. Having
was full of abbreviations. It occurs to me that since then achieved neither fame nor great
it was intended to be printed. It would have numbers, the name remains little known, even
been the first book to be printed in Gaelic, on in Ireland.
the new printing presses that were making Though we have the two explanations
their appearance throughout Europe. Its of the name, I am struck by how nearly we
subject matter however was running against could have had neither. We are fortunate that
the tide of the Reformation and the Wars of a nineteenth century dictionary picked up a
Religion. Circulating it would probably have folk-word for bearberry. We are fortunate that
been a criminal offence at the time, with Betha Colaim Chille was not lost or destroyed
Henry VIII's Bill for the 'Advancement of after the Flight of the Earls, one of whom was
True Religion and the Abolishment of the Manus' grandson.
Contrary' not too far in the future. Iona itself
was destroyed in 1561, two years before its
millenium and two years before the death of
O'Donnell. When the Gaelic language Note: The Annals of the Four Masters
appeared in print a short time later, in both records:
Ireland and Scotland, it was in the service of
Protestant religion. 'For 557, the battle of Moin Doire Lothair was
The 1837 OS memoir says that the gained over the Cruithnigh (Cruithne of
religious customs as described by Mr. Beck Ulster), by the Ui Neill of the North, ie by the
are 'abrogated'. This means they are Cinel Conaill and Cinel Eoghain, wherein fell
authoritatively denied or annulled. (In seven chieftains of the Cruithnigh, together
England, Reformation practice was not to with Aedh Breac; and it was on this occasion
allow tenants time off work - 'holy days' - to that the Lee and Carn Eolairgh were forfeited
observe abrogated saints' days, of which there to the Clanna Neill of theNorth'.
were many.) Connla's 'noble and well
executed work' has not survived either. The
shrine was in decline when Mr. Beck made
his record in 1683. Even so, it had survived
for over 1100 years and had therefore been a
major destination for pilgrims from much of
Ireland over that period of time.
The scale of its attraction is given by
500 horses or more being recorded there. This
would not make it as important as Knock is
today. Judging from the extent of the car park,
together with the on-street provision, I would
say Knock has the best part of 4000 car
spaces. The difference is not so great as this
comparison suggests however, because no
doubt the average time commitment of a
pilgrimage to Magilligan would have been
greater in that era than one to Knock in this.

5
,



,!
"


I am grateful to Dr. Ann Hamlin, Director of Built

Heritage, Department of the Environment for
Northern Ireland. She directed me close enough to
the historic site to ask where to find it, and told me
of the standing stone with the cross. After her
retirement, she went on to say the cross was 11th
or 12th century and that though I had said µCross of
Lorraine¶, there was no French connection. It is
not a common form, but is not unique to Duncrun.

I am grateful to my brother Frank Kneafcy. He

looked in a plastic supermarket bag that we found
at the foot of the cross which I had dismissed as
untidy picnic remnants. It contained human bones,
some part of a skull or skulls. They were brown
and obviously very old. We left them there.

I am grateful to Mrs Kathleen McDevitt on whose

farm the cross stands. I spoke to Mrs McDevitt¶s
daughter Mary on the day we made our visit. She
gave me the detail of the raised beach and she
knew which buildings standing today had used
stonework µrecycled¶ from the former abbey.
Mrs McDevitt was on holiday. I exchanged letters
with her subsequently. Her son had been
ploughing using a modern plough which dug
deeper than previously. A nephew who was a
priest gave the bones a Christian burial.

I thought I should share this with Ann Hamlin. I

delayed as I was afraid of disturbing the routine of
the farm. She told me that ancient burials were in
shallow graves, and it was generally young
farmers who disturbed them, as they worked their
machinery more vigorously than their fathers. She
said she could put an order on the land, restricting
its use to pasture, so there would be no more
disturbance. Though a grant would be payable to
the farm so that they would not suffer, I said I
would prefer to leave everything as we had found
it and please would she not impose a control on the
use of the land.

It was bizarre for us and for the McDevitts that as

legendary descendants of a man resurrected from
bones - doubtlessly from the same ancient burial
ground - we should have showed up on a day when
bones from there were again in evidence.